Classical Blog

Little light musings from James Waters, Creative Director for Classical Music

Peter Donohoe Mozart Cycle

We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Peter Donohoe to play a Scottish exclusive complete cycle of Mozart Piano Sonatas on Sunday 30 September, 2 December and 3 March.

Winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition, Donohoe is a truly international virtuoso and has played all the major concerti by Rachmaninov, Brahms, Prokofiev, Beethoven et al with the world’s greatest orchestras. He gave a fantastic performance of Rachmaninov’s 4th Piano Concerto with The St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in Perth last year. He is the romantic pianist’s pianist.

So why Mozart? This is surely not his territory with all its filigree delicacy and intimacy. And yet if you listen to his concerto and recital playing there is, like the late great John Ogdon, an extraordinary range of dynamic and emotion including staggeringly refined quiet playing.

The trouble with the classical music business is that artists get buttonholed. If it is Mozart it must be Mitsuko Uchida or Bach it must be Andras Schiff. There are some genuine all-rounders who have the technique to play everything and whose interpretations are suffused with learning across the repertoire. Peter Donohoe has reached the ‘national treasure’ stage of his career (he is 65) where he has total technical command and many years of experience and learning across an astonishingly broad repertoire which he can use to bring to fresh life truly great music. He is so excited about these pieces that he has added his own new epithets for a number of the sonatas, which he feels reveal more about their character.

The Mozart piano sonatas have long been a true test of great pianists – they are beautiful but fragile and require immense care and poise as well as total emotional sincerity. Peter Donohoe’s comment below tells us that we have a fantastic experience to look forward to

“The vast majority of instrumental soloists and conductors accept that Mozart's music comprises the ultimate challenge. Not only did his works influence every major composer who came after him, right up to the present day, but his prodigious natural talent produced music of such unimaginable perfection that it almost feels like arrogance to perform them.” Peter Donohoe